


Jewish Juno Drabbles

by She5los



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: (not first-hand but discussed by the characters), Also: what a thief might think of a mezuzah, Canon-typical death mention, Canon-typical space xenophobia, Fainting, Fantasy radiation sickness, Fasting (by choice), I gave Nureyev the singular PG-13 f-bomb and it was glorious, Jewish Juno, Kosher bees, Multi, Nausea and vomiting mention, Never underestimate the power of not letting your characters say 'fuck', Other, Peter 'there's only one kind of box people put on their door frames' Nureyev, Rosh HaShana | Jewish New Year, Shabbat, Yom Kippur | Atonement Day, unusual foods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-05-18 23:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19345138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/She5los/pseuds/She5los
Summary: A series of short stories set on the Crime Ship after Season 2, where everything is the same and Juno is Jewish.





	1. Peter Nureyev and the Mysterious Alarm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissjuliaMiriam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissjuliaMiriam/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter Nureyev has seen (and bested) a lot of alarm systems in his time, but he just can't figure out Juno's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figure Juno has a pretty understated mezuzah. He bought a cheap one decades ago and never saw the need to change it.
> 
> If you don't know what a mezuzah is: it's a little box or capsule that you put on your door frame, with a little scroll inside and the three pronged letter "shaddai" on the outside, and a lot of people like to touch it when they go through the door. You're supposed to put one on every door in the house (except the door to the bathroom) as a reminder that your whole house is holy. In many Jewish households, there's a mezuzah on the front door and nowhere else. In mixed-faith households, like mine, you might only find one on the door frame of the Jewish person's bedroom.

They were in transit to Susano when Peter Nureyev followed Juno into his room, flopped down on Juno’s bed (with his feet hanging off, or else they would’ve had Words about that) and said, “I’ve got a bit of an idle question for you.”

“Yeah?” Juno asked, unbuttoning his jacket and hanging it in his entirely too-small closet.

“The alarm on your door,” Nureyev said, which was the first time Juno had heard about any alarms on his door.  “I was wondering what sort of mechanism it has, or how you know it’s doing its job.”

Juno smiled.  This had to be a weird joke.  “I don’t have an alarm,” he said, and hoped that was an okay response for the setup.

“You touch it every time you enter your room,” Nureyev said.  “The little box outside, on the door frame? It doesn’t seem to take DNA, you don’t touch it the right way for fingerprint validation, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how it verifies you or what system it could be hooked up to.”

Juno snorted.  He wasn’t usually too big on jokes, but this was a really good one.  “You mean the mezuzah?” he asked. Had he finally found a gap in Peter Nureyev’s knowledge of useless trivia?

“Mezuzah,” Nureyev repeated, trying the word out in his mouth.  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them. Are they local to Hyperion?  Is their symbol that three-pronged shape?”

“What?”  It took Juno a moment of extreme confusion to figure out that Nureyev wasn’t actually listening to him.  “No, it’s not an alarm system. I told you that. It’s just a box on my door, and I touch it sometimes.”

“You touch it  _ every  _ time,” Nureyev countered, toeing his shoes off without looking at them.  “Every time you enter your room.”

Juno shrugged; he wasn’t exactly keeping track.  He bent over to untie his own shoes. “It doesn’t have any sensors or anything, though,” he said again.  “It’s an inert box. Mostly.”

“Only mostly!” Nureyev said, grinning and sitting up a bit.  “Do tell!”

“Well, it’s a box,” Juno said again, “And it has a letter on it in Hebrew, and it has a little piece of paper rolled up inside that tells you if you put it on your door, God will keep you safe.  So I figure I can use as much safety as any natural or supernatural beings can send my way, and also Benzaiten yelled at me when I got my first apartment and didn’t put one up.”

Nureyev frowned as he loosened his tie.  “And that’s… Where is that from? I apologize; I know snippets of many languages, but the only two I know  _ well _ are Brahmis and Solar.”

It took another moment for Juno to realize Peter was asking what Hebrew was.  Which meant-- “I never told you I’m Jewish.”

There was another pause while Peter Nureyev finally got to be the one who was behind in the conversation.  “Oh, it’s a  _ Jewish _ mostly-inert box on your door that you touch every time you enter your room,” he said finally.  “Yes, everything makes complete sense now.”

Juno rolled his eye and switched his eye patch out for the hat he wore at night, that covered half his face without being uncomfortable if he jammed the side of his face against his pillow.  “Okay, the real quick version, I guess: I have a family religion that was passed down to me, and there’s a part of the holy text that you’re supposed to put on your doorpost because it was written before modern construction techniques, so you take a scroll with those words and put them in a box on your door frame.  And, when you touch the box, you remember your dead brother smiling and telling you he’s just gotten a supporting role in a new ballet. Does that make sense?”

“You are constantly full of surprises, Juno,” Nureyev told him instead of giving a straightforward answer.  “I have  _ heard _ of Judaism; I just don’t know any of the details.”

“There are a  _ lot _ of details,” Juno told him, and took his shirt off and tossed it in the general direction of his hamper.  The damn religion was 99% details. “We’ll do Shabbat sometime, okay? But I’ll need some candles first, and some special wine and fresh bread, so it’s gotta be after we get to Susano.”  He started removing his pants. Nureyev was still working on his tie.

Nureyev smiled charmingly and started unbuttoning his shirt.  “I have no idea what Shabbat is, but it certainly sounds romantic.”

Juno found himself laughing for the second time that night.  “Oh, that’s a good one, Nureyev,” he told his boyfriend. “Nah, it’s a nice dinner you have with your family, and then you spend the next day not working, and your mom yells at you if you try to do your homework.”

“You’re  _ capable _ of not working?” Nureyev asked, with the smug smirk he used when he was making fun of someone.  “I’d heard otherwise from Rita.” He started undoing the buttons on his cuffs.

“It’s one day,” Juno pointed out.  “Besides, there are three ingredients you need in order to do it and I have zero of them; how observant do you think I am?”

“Well, you do touch your meh-- your little door-box every time you walk through,” Nureyev pointed out.

“Yeah,” Juno agreed.  He’d already told Peter why.  He let his agreement hang in the air for a moment before he added, “Anyway, is that all your questions?  I’m kind of exhausted.”

“Ah, yes, a long day of losing at chess and watching streams,” Nureyev joked.  He  _ finally _ got his shirt off and started on his skirt.

“The longest,” Juno said.  “Some of those streams felt like they lasted years.  You take too long getting ready for bed, you know that?”

“We don’t all wear t-shirts just because we’re between missions,” Nureyev pointed out.

“Oh, I’m entirely capable of wearing t-shirts almost anywhere,” Juno reminded him.  “Just not for some disguises.”

“I was under the impression you liked my button-downs,” Nureyev said, which was changing the subject.  Score 1 for Juno. “You certainly liked them when we met.”

“I like them a lot, but I don’t like waiting around for you to get over here,” Juno told him.

“I can make my bedtime routine longer, if you’re going to complain like this.”

“I will sing the  _ entire shema _ if you take two  _ seconds _ longer than you need to.”

They started giggling at almost the same time.

“I have no idea what the ‘shma’ is,” Nureyev admitted, finally stripping down to his underwear and joining Juno in bed.  “It sounds like a monster from one of Rita’s movie marathons.”

“It’s a bunch of prayers you're supposed to say,” Juno told him dismissively.  “Ben used to do it. Used to wake me up on weekends doing it when we were teenagers, so now I know the whole thing whether I want to or not.”

“Define ‘a bunch,” Nureyev challenged him, still smiling.

“Like six, and then you say the full text that's in the mezuzah on the door.”

Nureyev reached over Juno to pull him into a hug.  “You know an awful lot for a non-expert.”

Juno kissed him briefly.  “Yeah, you have to learn the basics as a kid.  Mom wasn’t consistent about anything, but Ben was.  He danced every day, did his homework on a normal schedule, and just… tried to live like the world wasn’t falling down around us.  Anything that took his mind off real life, he did it. I did, too, but… I guess I just wasn’t as good at pretending.” He didn’t want to end the day on that note, so he added, “So we studied together for our big coming-of-age shindig, and now I know all this stuff whether I want to or not.”

“I’m excited to learn all of it,” Peter told him, and kissed him, and pulled him closer.


	2. Juno Steel and the Song of the People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Crime Crew gets some interesting ingredients on Susano and Juno lets his friends peer-pressure him into teaching them how to do Shabbat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a convert, the most useful prayer guide I've ever received was a single piece of paper that had the text, transliteration, and translation of the three essential Shabbat prayers on it and nothing else. Hopefully, a thousand or more years from now, someone has figured out how to put together a prayer book that tells you which parts are important and which parts are for fun.

Susano didn’t go badly.  It didn’t go a way Juno would call “well,” but he also wouldn’t say it went badly.  But maybe that was just selfish, because they did steal some code for an automated warship, ransom it, and then give a fake file back to the company.  They definitely did that. And Juno did manage to find candles, appropriate wine, and bread -- it even turned out most of the local fruits grew on plants technically classified as “vines,” so he had his pick of whatever sounded nice.  The real downside was that, after they’d secured their payday, Buddy mentioned that they could all get their radiation sickness treated -- Vespa had her bracelet that automatically diluted the Cure Mother into a safe dosage, but as Buddy put it, “Jet, Juno, and I will have to see a chemist.”

It didn’t help that, when Nureyev asked why Juno was on that list, Jet said, “He had a few days of exposure in the Cerberus Province.  He was unwell by the time I returned him to Hyperion, and we wouldn’t want any lingering effects when we have the Cure Mother in our possession.”

So now Nureyev was treating him like he was made of paper and insisting that nothing had changed.

Juno figured he should probably cook something for Shabbat dinner.  He wasn't a good cook by any stretch of the imagination, and didn't know anything about Susanan food, but Nureyev insisted he could help.  Juno explained the main restriction was that, through a combination of the majority of the Susanan Jewish community being on the other side of the planet and all of the indigenous animals being just  _ incredibly weird, _ they were going to be having a dairy meal.  Dairy on Susano came from the local bees, which had cloven hooves and a two-stomach system and were probably slaughtered by kosher butchers on the other side of Susano, which made the parameters of a dairy meal that much more important to explain.  Juno wouldn't normally have gone to the trouble -- he ate crickets regularly, and the last time he'd thought about kashrut at all had probably been at his wedding -- but he wanted to make sure he was doing everything right since it was going to be an educational Shabbat.

He didn't want his radiation sickness to be Nureyev's problem, but Nureyev had always done his best to make Juno's problems his, and now that he knew about the nausea, he noticed it.  He noticed when Juno ran the garbage disposal after three days on-planet and had to cross the room for a minute. He noticed when Juno had trouble being in the same room as Rita's salmon snacks.  He noticed that Juno hadn't been as certain of how much he could drink without emptying his stomach ever since they'd gotten on the ship. Worse, he mentioned it.

So Juno was stuck in the galley on a Friday afternoon with a Peter Nureyev who had started hovering, and he was cutting bee cheese into bite-size pieces.

"You're sure this smells the way it's supposed to?" he confirmed.  It was a bizarre scent, almost fruity, and it didn't smell bad, but it wasn't the way he expected cheese to smell.

"We only picked it up yesterday," Nureyev pointed out.  His voice went soft and gentle as he asked, "Is it bothering you?"

"Nope," Juno said, mustering all the civility he had.  "Just never had  _ bee cheese _ before, wanted to make sure that's how it smells."

"There are some real delicacies in the Outer Rim," Nureyev told him, and his voice was quiet and wistful. Juno wondered if Susano was one of the places Nureyev had promised to take him,  _ each more beautiful than the last. _   "I want to take you to try all of them.  A fresh farmer's cheese like this pairs well with the vegetables I chose, don't worry.  It's a unique cuisine, but generally considered to be very agreeable."

There wasn't any retort Juno could make to that.  He  _ knew _ Nureyev meant it was a light meal that wouldn't bother his stomach, but it was just as easy to interpret 'agreeable' as 'something that tastes good,' so how could Juno complain that Nureyev was babying him? Peter Nureyev had watched Cassandra Kanagawa punch him in the ribs, and later seen him go into mild shock from blood loss, and still hadn't pulled out the kid gloves the way he'd been doing for the past three days.

"Alright," Juno said, trying to tell himself he was just being paranoid -- ran in the family, and he'd made a pretty good career out of it, so that wasn't too far-fetched as theories went -- and Peter Nureyev had always been kind and considerate, and Juno was just imagining the extra care he'd been getting recently.  "What's the next step?"

"Now we fry it up, and later, when we've made a vegetable stew, we'll add it toward the end."

Peter Nureyev was an insufferably caring person, and he was also the only person on the ship who could make some sort of food from most planets, so being nice to him was the only way to ensure a good Shabbat.

"Is this a normal start to Shabbat?" Nureyev asked idly while Juno stood over a pan of hot oil and cheese cubes with a spatula and a focused glare.

"Cooking, yes," Juno told him. "Having to think the words 'bee cheese' in sequential order, no."

That made Nureyev laugh, and he chopped some squash-like object into thin half-moons.  "There are stranger animals in these worlds, Juno," he said quietly. "When those are nice and brown, why don't you set up the ritual components?"

Juno scraped his wooden spatula across the bottom of the pan, prying up cheese cubes, and went to check that his tea lights were by his place setting along with some matches, and the corkscrew was on the table along with wine glasses for everyone, and the challah was still there, sitting on a plate under a dish towel.  He double-checked that each place setting had a printed copy of the prayers. Then he returned to the pan and jostled the cheese cubes again.

"Ritual components all set up," he confirmed.  "I still wish Buddy would tell me what she ate so she could have  _ something _ during the Kiddush."

"Oh, she eats sugar and very carefully prepared oil," Nureyev told him.  "If it has any protein in it, she has a reaction."

Juno stared for a moment.  That made the wine part impressively simple."If I make her a glass of sugar water, is that insulting?" he asked quietly.

Nureyev smiled gently and said, "I'll take over the cheese if you want to go ask her."

Juno looked down at the pan he was technically in charge of.  "I think it's about done, actually," he pointed out. The cubes were a nice brown color, anyway.

"Excellent.  Then pour them out onto here and I'll get the sauce started." Nureyev slid a plate lined with a towel his way and Juno pushed the cheese out onto it and left.  He hated the feeling that he was imagining Nureyev babying him, and he hated knowing it might actually be happening even more.

.-._.-._.-._

When dinner was ready, Juno had a nice wine glass of sugar water ready at Buddy's table setting so she could drink when they drank.  He had no idea what to do about the bread, but if anyone wanted to do this again, maybe they could work something out.

"Alright," he said when everyone was seated. "Shabbat night.  Tonight, we let go of the stresses of the week, like the stress from the heist, and we welcome the peace of Shabbat.  We all have printouts of the blessings and translations, and I'm gonna light the candles now. If I'd brought any of my stuff with me, I would have a prayer shawl over my head, but I didn't expect to be doing this, ever, so it's fine.  We light the candles because God said 'let there be light,' and by doing Shabbat, we're doing what God does." He was smiling a little. He wasn't sure why he was smiling. He had no idea why it was so easy to say these things about a barely-remembered ritual.  "Let's sing the candle blessing, and if you want to cover your eyes while I light the candles and uncover them when the blessing's over so it's like the candles have magically been lit, that's definitely something people do." Ben had convinced him to, once or twice.  It was fun enough, but he just wasn't big on magic or miracles.

He sang louder than he was comfortable with, familiar words and a familiar tune, memorized when he was little:  _ Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, Asher kid'shanu, b'mitzvotav, v'tzivanu l'hadlik ner, l'hadlik ner shel Shabbat.  _ He struck a match at the start and had lit the candles by the end.

Sometimes, when Sarah Steel was feeling kind of shaky, he used to wonder if they sang the blessing instead of saying it to ensure people would have time to light the candles even if the match wouldn't strike or one of the wicks was burnt down.

He pushed the candles toward the center of the table.  "Okay," he said. "That's the light of Shabbat, and it reminds us of beauty and, back before electricity, it gave us time to be with each other and also study Torah if we wanted.  Now, it's just pretty. Next, we do the Kiddush." He grabbed the corkscrew and the wine bottle. It had been a while since he'd opened a bottle of wine at all, much less any that could feasibly be used for a Kiddush.  He'd forgotten how hard you had to cut the foil, and his corkscrew skills definitely left something to be desired, but after the Fascist Renaissance and then the League of Three a few centuries later, the rabbis had doubled down on the idea that kosher wine only stayed kosher when it was opened by a Jew. Juno wasn't scared of any blessings for other gods said over the wine bottle, because it was all made up anyway, so if he didn't know about it, it didn't matter.  But he did still want to open the wine himself.

Juno poured some wine for himself and passed the bottle around.  "Okay, so in this part," he said, holding up the translation sheet, "You can see the first blessing thanks God for making the fruit of the vine. Wines made with other fruits can be kosher, but you can't say this blessing over them on Shabbat.  Do we all have wine or simple syrup?" He checked the table. Everyone was ready. "Okay, this is a long one, so pick up your wine glasses and remember we can drink when it's done." Was this how it felt to lead a Passover seder? This was probably how his mom felt every Pesach.

They all sang the blessing to God for making 'the fruit of the vine,' then for making their ancestors Jewish and giving them Shabbat, which Juno figured was true enough since all of them were human, even if he was the only Jewish one. He had to refer to the printout once or twice to remember all the words. Then they all had a sip of wine, except for Buddy, who had a sip of plain syrup (she'd assured Juno she enjoyed it well enough, even if she did miss food sometimes) and when everyone had put their glasses down, Juno just felt relief they were on the last blessing.  He'd definitely lost a few people during the Kiddush and was looking forward to another short prayer.

"Okay," he said, "Now we're gonna sing this last one and I'll uncover the challah, and before you eat anything else, you have to tear off a piece and eat some. Except Buddy, who would die or get sick, but I looked it up and you can still bless the bread even if you can't eat it."

“How considerate,” Buddy sniped.

Juno smiled sarcastically and told her, “If you had given me any remote hint about what you eat, I might’ve been able to figure something out in time.  If you feel left out, you can at least console yourself by knowing I feel like an asshole.” Then he turned to the rest of the table and said, “Okay, we all have to be touching for this.  Apparently, when they say there’s a first time for everything, that includes telling a table full of grown adults to hold hands.”

They all obediently held hands, like it wasn’t an absolutely bizarre request, and Juno led them in singing the HaMotzi.  Then they passed around the bread and the rest of the meal proceeded with the regular shuffle of group dinners, except there were candles to avoid touching and everyone had a glass of wine and a hunk of bread to start with, and it felt  _ nice _ in a way Juno couldn't place.

“So, how's this compare with what you used to do with your family?” Rita asked about halfway through the meal.

Juno just shrugged. "I mean, anything's better than that," he pointed out.  "After we were about four, Mom got pretty bad, so it was just: once every month or two, Mom would pull out the candlesticks, and she'd yell at us to wash our hands even if we said we had, and then we'd have to sit there with her for an hour and sing all the songs and pretend it was a normal, fun holiday meal.  Cricket pad Thai alone in my apartment with half my ribs bruised is better than Shabbat with Mom."

“There are songs?” Nureyev asked, apparently pulled from his conversation with Buddy and Vespa by the prospect of something annoying he could do.

“We aren’t singing the songs,” Juno grumbled at the same time Vespa pulled out her comms saying, “I have to hear these songs.”

Dinner wasn’t the worst, all told.  The second half of it included music from Vespa’s comms, and the candles cast a nice light, and it had been a long time since Juno had had real wine.  Everyone liked each other, sort of -- Nureyev had a problem with Jet, but they’d figured out a truce -- and there were no arguments, no scared kids just trying to placate their mom, just a shipful of people having a nice dinner on a Friday evening.  Jet offered to show them how to celebrate an upcoming Jovian holiday and he and Vespa offered to do the dishes. The food did agree with Juno’s stomach, and things felt good for the first time in a long time.  



	3. Juno Steel and the Mother's Reflection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno marks Sarah Steel's yahrzeit and reflects on one aspect of the religion she gave him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A yahrzeit is the anniversary of a loved one's death, particularly a parent. In this story, I have Juno mark Benzaiten's yahrzeit as well because, when losing someone feels like losing half of yourself, that's the kind of closeness you're supposed to mark yearly.
> 
> You aren't supposed to drink, especially heavily, on a yahrzeit, but.... It's Juno.
> 
> A note on Hebrew names: they're not always your regular name, but they're the names people use in situations involving prayer. They include a marker of lineage (Juno's and Benten's names would both be followed by "ben Sarah," or "son of Sarah"), but that isn't mentioned in the story. They sometimes match a person's regular name, and sometimes don't, depending on how your parents decided to name you.
> 
> Also, this is by far the shortest chapter. I haven't read the part of the Kabbala that talks about time, but thinking about time this way has made sense ever since I heard about it several years ago.

The biggest change to Juno since Nureyev had mistaken his mezuzah for an alarm system was that he stopped feeling the need to explain things in Solar before he’d said the word for them in Hebrew. Half a year ago, he’d told Nureyev he was depressed because it was his brother’s deathiversary. Now, he told him it was for Sarah Steel’s yahrzeit, and then called it a deathiversary only when Nureyev asked what that meant.

Because, like Ma used to say, time is a spiral: you can move forward forever, but you always come around to places that look like the past. If he thought hard enough, Juno could see how those spirals lined up: the big loops of history, with the downtrodden rising up, and succeeding, and slowly being pushed down again until they once again had nothing to lose; the small spirals of a person like Sarah Steel, whose mood changed month to month or week to week; the steal-sell-move cycle of the ship full of thieves he’d found himself on; the steady yearly and weekly cycle of his heritage, that had held the same days sacred for thousands of years.

Time moved forward, and it still took you back to the places you’d been, and twenty-two years later Juno still marked the yahrzeits of Sarah and Benzaiten steel, or Sarah and Esau Steel, and he looked into the past and found it full to bursting with relevance, and for once, he stayed up late, fully sober, talking in front of the candle about all the things he’d never been able to say to his ma, and he thought maybe that was progress, and if he went back to drinking his way through her memorial every year, well, that would just make this year an unusual loop of the spiral, wouldn’t it?


	4. Happy New Year, Mistah Steel! (pt. 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno makes teshuvah for the first time in over fifteen years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter's alias in this fic is Andrew Connick, after a character in Deep Secret.
> 
> He doesn't say it, but the type of apologizing Juno does in this chapter is called teshuvah, which is where you figure out how you've wronged people, apologize, and commit to changing your behavior in a meaningful way. It's a good rubric for how any apology should work at any time of year.
> 
> Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, and then you have eight days to make all your apologies before Yom Kippur, where you apologize to God. This section only covers the first couple days of the High Holy Days, and then the next part covers Yom Kippur.

Jet was playing Rangian solitaire when Juno appeared in the door of the crew lounge, wrapped in his oversized trenchcoat like a child in a blanket.  He’d looked a little lost ever since Jet had removed his eye, but that was his issue to sort out; the alternative would have been worse.

“Hey, Big Guy,” Juno said, leaning against the door frame.  “Mind if I come in?”

“If I did, I would have closed the door,” Jet pointed out.

Juno nodded and walked in uncharacteristically slowly, looking all around the room.  He eventually sat on the loveseat, cat-corner from the couch where Jet was playing his game.

“I was thinking about Mars and the Cerberus Province, and the heist we did and how you removed my eye and took me most of the way home,” Juno told him.

“That does summarize our dealings together on Mars,” Jet said.  Steel usually approached things in very circumspect ways; it was usually best to keep him talking when there was something he didn’t want to talk about.

Juno nodded.  “Yeah… And I know I’d just come out of… Really, the biggest betrayal I’d had in a long time, so I was really suspicious of you and Buddy.  I know I complained a lot. And I guess what I want to ask is: was that just, more or less, what you expected from working with me? Or do I owe you an apology?”

Jet’s hands paused in front of him.  He enjoyed Rangian solitaire for its simplicity, which leant it a hypnotic quality.  Juno Steel attempting to apologize with words, rather than unnecessary actions, was highly unusual.

“Verbal apologies from you are highly unusual,” Jet said.

“Yeah, I know,” Juno told him, starting to sound like his usual baseline level of annoyed.  “I just wanna… I know I hurt a lot of people this year, and I want to start making things right.”

“I found your actions highly ineffective at changing anything Buddy or I were set on,” Jet told him.  “Your main alteration of our plan -- not shooting Rasbach’s would-be assassin -- ended up being a good decision that Buddy thanked you for.  Your word choice is not worth mentioning, as it is clearly a form of processing for you and has had little to no impact on any of Buddy’s or my actions.”

“So, we’re cool?” Juno clarified, sounding suspicious.  “It’s okay if we aren’t.”

“There is no tension between us, from my perspective,” Jet said, and returned to his game.

Juno took a few moments before saying, “Thanks,” and leaving the room.

.-._.-._.-._

Steel walked into the infirmary three minutes before he was scheduled to be there, munching apple rings.  “Hey, Vespa,” he said in that dumb, chirpy voice that usually meant he was full of sarcastic cheer rather than the real thing.

“Hey, Steel, you planning to start eating fruits and veggies that don’t come out of a bottle?” Vespa asked, gesturing at the bag of dried apples in his hand.

He stuffed the bag into one of his oversized pockets.  “Nah, just seemed like a good day to eat apples,” he said, because he was constitutionally incapable of giving straightforward answers.  “You ready to look at my shoulder, or is there some kind of prep you need to do?”

Vespa glanced at her list of Steel’s injuries that she wanted to check in on.  “You get hurt too much, Steel, you know that?” she asked him.

“Hey, it’s a talent,” he told her, hopping up on the exam bed unprompted.  “Besides, my shoulder problem’s from back when I had a low-key death wish. Things are different now.”

“They better be,” Vespa grumbled.  She still didn’t trust the guy, and insisted on watching him do the shoulder stretches he should’ve done in Hyperion, but he did seem less injury-prone than he’d been in the stories Connick and Rita told.  “Alright, enough chatting. Jacket off.”

“Why, Miss Vespa!” Steel gasped as he shucked the trenchcoat off, “I thought you only talked to Buddy that way!”

“Shut up, Steel,” she told him.  “That  _ is _ medical advice.”

His shit-eating grin lasted about as long as it took for her to find the range of lateral motion of his shoulder.

“Hey, I have a question I’ve been meaning to ask,” Juno told her after they’d gone through some of his stretches.  He wasn’t doing too badly, considering. She wondered idly if it would be the same if she didn’t monitor his progress so closely.  Not trying to die and putting in the work it took to live were different things, after all.

“Hold on, Steel, I think I’m hallucinating right now,” she joked.  He tended not to understand deadpan when he wasn’t the one delivering it, and Vespa liked to take full advantage.  “I could’ve sworn I heard you try to start a conversation when I  _ know _ I told you to shut up a minute ago.”

“Consider it medical advice, in the sense that I’m hoping it’ll help me get on my doctor’s nerves less.”

Vespa guided his arm through a full circle, noting the pops she felt because Steel hated admitting any discomfort, ever.  “I’m listening,” she said only when she was sure he understood how much completely medically justified pain she could cause him.

“So, I’m kind of an asshole,” he admitted, which was, to be fair, a surprisingly honest thing for him to say.  “And I’m trying to be less of one. And that starts with making apologies, so I really want to know: is there anything specific I’ve done that’s been bugging you, or is it a more general Juno-Steel-never-follows-medical-advice sort of thing?  Because I’m definitely planning to work on that second one, but I also want to start out already having apologized for things I’ve done that’ve pissed you off.” His smile looked strained, which made sense with Vespa holding his arm out behind him like she was.

Was there anything  _ specific? _   In general, the guy was a snake, constantly finding reasons to skip check-ins as if not monitoring his health would somehow make it better.  But in specific… In specific, he’d brought her back to Buddy. He was the reason she could fall asleep in her girlfriend’s arms every night instead of sleeping on a bunk in the Cerberus Board of Fresh Starts Homeless Housing Initiative building.

“Nah, Steel.  There’s nothing specific,” she told him.  “Just come to your goddamn appointments, and we’ll be cool.”

His eyes went scared and started looking at the wall instead of her, but he said, “Yeah, I’ll, uh.  I’ll do my best.” Some kind of trauma. The lady picked up a new trauma with his groceries every week.  It really wasn’t any of Vespa’s business.

.-._.-._.-._

Rita was enjoying a nice, normal afternoon.  She was sitting on the couch, doing exactly what she wanted, which was to have a bowl of miso popcorn and another bowl of chocolate-covered barbecue tapioca chips on the cushion next to the one she was sitting on, listening to a radio stream through her earphones and coding a nice new app for Frannie -- a real good one that would hack into her matches' phones when she was on her dating apps and go through their bank accounts to see if they'd spent money on cat food in the last two months, so she could always match with people who owned cats -- on the big monitor so she could use her nice keyboard instead of her computer’s touch keyboard.

She noticed Mista Steel when he came in, but he didn’t do anything for a moment.  But then he started waving at her, so she waved back, and it took her a minute to realize he was trying to get her attention, not just say hi.

“Hey, Mista Steel,” she said as she pulled her earbuds out.  “How are you doin’ today?”

“Okay,” he told her.  “I was wondering-- ...Actually, can I sit down?”

Rita grinned, because of course the answer was yes, but wouldn’t it be hilarious if she pretended it was no?  “No, Mista Steel, this is the Rita Couch now, home of the Rita, only Ritas, computers, and snacks allowed here.”

He sat down on the loveseat without acknowledging her excellent joke.  Usually, he at least  _ got _ her jokes, so that meant there was something on his mind, something so big it was more important than palling around with his good friend Rita.

“Do you have a moment?” he asked, and he sounded all tense, which was weird, because they were very definitely between cases (or heists, or sales, or whatever the word was -- they were between them.)

“Yeah, Mista Steel, I ain’t doing nothing but coding a nice helper app for Frannie,” Rita told him.  “Well,  _ and _ listening to this real good radio stream about these three smugglers who always get bested by the cops, but then they always start again fresh each week tryin’ to pull off a new heist!  But that’s on pause, so I got a minute.”

Mista Steel smiled kinda sad and said, “I’ve been kind of an asshole to you this year.”  Rita nodded politely; it wasn’t like that was news. But Mista Steel had a dramatic streak a kilometer wide, and he couldn’t just say something big without building up to it first.  “Especially when my eye blew up. And I want to apologize for the way I treated you.”

Rita grinned.  “I mean, it got us here, on this spaceship, eventually, didn’t it, Boss?”

Mista Steel shrugged.  So this was Real Serious, then!  Because he always looked for any way out of admitting to what a jerk he’d been.  “I guess, but that doesn’t justify it,” he said. “I don’t want to just say sorry, and you say it’s okay, and we move on without me having to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  You’re my oldest friend, Rita.”

“Now, Mista Steel, it ain’t nice, not at all, goin’ around talkin’ about a lady's age like that!” Rita joked, feigning shock.

_ That _ pulled a laugh out of him.  “I just mean you’ve been around for a while,” he said.  “Longer than most of my friends. And I want you to know I appreciate that, and I want to be a good friend to you, too.”

“You already are, Mista Steel,” Rita reassured him.  Sure, he wasn’t perfect, but who was? And Rita understood him pretty well, so little things didn’t blow up into big problems.

“I really mean it,” Mista Steel repeated.  “I’m gonna try to work on my temper. You don’t deserve to have to  _ manage _ me, like I’m a kid or something.  And, if there’s anything that’s been bugging you, that I never apologized for, I want to do that now.  Or at least in the next week or so. In case you think of anything.”

Rita smiled.  “Awww, that’s really sweet, Boss,” she told him.  “You’re gettin’ all considerate of your favorite Rita.”

“My favorite Rita’s right,” Mista Steel said, grinning for real this time.  “Best Rita in the solar system.”

“You know how you could show that I’m your favoritest, bestest friend in the whole wide universe?” Rita asked.  When Mista Steel was stressed out, watching a stream or two usually helped, and Rita always enjoyed some company, so asking him to join her would be a win-win scenario.

“Hmmmm,” Mista Steel said, already much more chipper than he’d been coming into the room.  “Gotta put my detective hat on for this one. Does it involve… Watching a stream with you?”

“Ain’t gotta do no detecting to figure that out,” Rita sniped back.  “But yes. Sit down and have some tapioca chips.”

“What’s on the schedule tonight?” Mista Steel asked, positioning a throw pillow on the armrest of the loveseat and pulling at his coat as he lay down.

“Werevolves on the Moon 2,” Rita told him.  It was kind of a brag; they almost didn’t release the second installment, and then they did, but only for four minutes, and Rita managed to save a copy before all the copyright lawyers and producers got it taken down from the top streaming sites.

Mista Steel frowned and asked, “Wasn’t the original terrible?  Why are we watching the sequel?”

“Oh, the original was the WORST, Mista Steel!” Rita yelled, and her shoulders did a happy little shake.  “And the second one’s supposed to be even worse, PLUS it broke a bunch of copyright laws, so I’m real excited to watch it!”

“C-movies all the way down, huh?” Mista Steel asked.  He looked all snuggly and soft, curled up on the couch.  He used to only look that way when he was sleeping, and Rita figured Mista Connick was having a real good influence on him.  “Sounds good. I’m stealing your chips, though.” He reached over, and Rita pretended to be annoyed even though she’d offered, and she finally got the movie up on the screen, and she realized it had been way too long since they’d watched a real stinker of a movie together, even if they did live in a six-person spaceship now.

.-._.-._.-._

Buddy was in the galley, trying not to ignore the shot glass of flavorless oil in front of her as she worked on the flow chart for the next heist.  Her afternoon vitamin pills sat next to it, and she was just about annoyed enough at herself to swallow the whole thing down when Juno Steel walked in to get himself a glass of water, and she reconsidered since she didn’t really like eating in front of people anymore.

“Hey, Buddy,” he said, sounding unusually chipper.  “How’s your day going?” He pulled some apple rings out of his pocket (?????), looked at the oil and vitamins Buddy had been ignoring, and put them back in (this time she heard the crinkle of a bag, thank goodness).

“I’m doing alright,” Buddy told him.  “Do you have any particular reason for asking?”

“Because I may or may not get  _ real annoying _ in the next few minutes,” Juno admitted.

Buddy raised her eyebrows.  He was usually annoying, so she wondered what could possibly differentiate this afternoon from any other.  “Go on,” she prompted, and tapped “Save” on her planning program.

“I want to apologize,” Juno said, which was, quite frankly, the opposite of annoying in a person who always seemed to feel the world was conspiring against him.  “I’ve been really skeptical about the plans you and Jet come up with, and you’ve never been anything other than trustworthy. I think, when we were in the Cerberus province, it was more or less expected since we were working together for the first time, but I got on this ship knowing you’d be running things, and I need to respect your expertise.”

Buddy’s mind shifted through options for why a lady like Juno Steel would apologize for being an ass.  If he was dying, Vespa would have told her. If he was planning some sort of suicide mission, his dear Andrew would surely put a stop to it.  If there were any concerns about the safety of the ship, Jet would have mentioned it, and if their cybersecurity had been compromised, Buddy didn’t think there was any force in the galaxy that would keep Rita from running through the ship, screaming her pretty little head off about it and beating a sharp staccato into the floors with her itty-bitty shoes.

“Could I ask why you’re giving me the climactic confession of a mortally wounded hero from one of Jet’s action movies?” she asked, not letting her confusion or concern show on her face.

Juno looked like he wanted to pace.  He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else, including outside the ship.  He certainly wasn’t acting like a person making an apology of their own free will.  “There’s this holiday,” he said after no less than twelve seconds of fidgeting. “The most important one.  New Year’s.” He sat down. “You’re supposed to apologize to the people who matter to you for the bullshit you’ve done during the year, and then you figure out how to make it right.  I want to do that. I want to do good.” He sat, frozen, like Buddy had the power to end his life with a word.

Buddy smirked.  He’d put her through plenty of belly-aching; she wasn’t letting him get off with just  _ wanting to change. _   Wanting meant nothing.  She also wasn't going to accept an apology he technically hadn't made yet.  “I’m glad you finally figured out what you’ve been aiming for this whole time," she told him.

Juno was smiling and looking down.  When he looked up again, he told her, "You have no idea how appropriate your phrasing is for this holiday."

"Don't I?" Buddy asked. She'd have to look up the Jewish new year later, just to be sure she could field questions.  "Juno, what is your actual purpose in being here?"

"To talk about what I can do better," he said without hesitation. Which was really too bad, since, if he'd said 'to apologize,' Buddy could have pointed out that he hadn't actually said the words yet. Gentle mockery would have to wait, then.

"What I need you to do is take instruction," Buddy told him instead. "It's all well and good, asking questions while we're still planning things, but when we're in the middle of things, I need you to trust me. That's the only way for me to guarantee I can keep you safe."

And keep everyone else on the crew safe. She hoped she didn't need to say it out loud for him to understand it.

"I'll do my best," Juno said, which was somehow more reassuring that if he had assured her he'd do it every time. More plausible, Buddy supposed.  "Is there anything else that's been bothering you?"

"Nothing comes to mind at the moment," Buddy told him.  "Is there a deadline?"

"Not really, but preferably by next Wednesday. And also I'll need that night and all of Thursday off."

Buddy frowned. They'd been planning their next move for that Friday, and there would be prep work to handle beforehand.  "Will you be on the ship, or elsewhere?" she asked. Laying the groundwork for the heist would be entirely possible with five, but it was always nice to have a backup.

"I'll be moonside," Juno said cheerfully.  "It took forever, finding a synagogue with openings this late in the game. Even though I could pick anywhere on or near Saturn.”  He was clearly very proud of himself, and completely unconcerned with the (small) wrench he was throwing into Buddy’s plans.

“Have fun,” Buddy told him.  “Oh, and just so we’re clear: you haven’t actually made the apology yet.  Or rather, you have in spirit, but not in words.”

He startled.  For someone who’d made a career out of tracking down danger and surviving, he really did startle easily.  “Shit, sorry about that.” He straightened, took a deep breath, and said, “Buddy, I’m sorry that I haven’t listened to you enough, or trusted your expertise, and I’m going to do my best to do what you tell me during crunch time.”

“Good,” Buddy said.  “Apology accepted; that sounds like everything we discussed.  Enjoy your days off.”

She heard the plastic crinkle again as Juno left the room, and downed her vitamins and oil before anyone else could enter the galley.

.-._.-._.-._

Andrew was in his room, picking his way through his door lock collection, when he heard Juno’s footsteps come down the hallway and stop outside his door.  He smiled softly to himself; he’d convince Juno to come inside whenever he liked if it took the next year.

“Would you like to come in?” he asked before Juno could ask his boyfriend, who loved him, if he could enter his room while the door was open.

He heard one step that brought Juno into the room just as the lock he’d been working on clicked and he turned the mechanism.

“You do have my attention, you know,” Andrew told his lover.  He could very nearly feel Juno’s stiffness from a meter and a half away.  “Forgive me for not looking up; our next target is known for taking physical security measures, so speed-picking is the name of the game for me, I’m afraid.” He turned the lock back so it was locked again and started loosening the screws in his lock clamp.

“I can come back later if you’re busy,” the galaxy’s cutest detective told him, which, combined with the uncertainty in his tone and the way he shifted his weight as he said it, meant he was there for much more than idle chatting.

Andrew put the lock back in his case and turned to face his lover.  “I can do this any time,” he pointed out. “Cred for your thoughts?”

Juno frowned.  Andrew loved his frown; it was an excellent thinking frown.  “I have an apology to make to you,” he said, which was more or less unprecedented in Andrew's close and intimate studies of Juno Steel.  “A lot of apologies, I think. And I need your help figuring some of them out.”

Andrew frowned.  “So, you need me… to participate… in your apology to  _ me,” _ he clarified.

“To make sure we’re talking about the same things, yeah,” Juno said.  He took two more steps into the room and sat on Andrew's bed.

“Well,” Andrew said warmly.  “I’ve never done choose-your-own-apology before.”

“I ran off on you,” Juno said, which was an interesting place to start since they’d already discussed it.  “And I know you said it’s okay, but it still eats at me sometimes and I want to make sure it’s really okay.”

Ah.  So that was how it was.  Juno wasn’t apologizing for things he’d done that had actually hurt Andrew; he was apologizing for things he felt guilty about.  Andrew could think of one very notable place where those two categories didn’t intersect.

“Let’s skip the guessing game,” he suggested.  “I don’t have any…  _ uncertainty _ about you, and we’ve already discussed that ad nauseum, so there’s really nothing left to discuss.”  He shifted to a deeper, more serious tone of voice as he added, “I can only think of one topic we’ve been avoiding, really.”

Juno’s eyes skittered to the door and then back to Andrew.  “Can we close the door?” he asked quietly. “I don’t think I can do this if I can’t use your name.”

Andrew said, “Certainly,” and began the process of becoming his real self, his Peter Nureyev self, the man he was around Juno.

Juno stood up and closed the door, and they were alone together as their most honest selves.

“This is about the radiation poisoning,” Juno said quietly.

Peter gave him time to continue on that train of thought.

After a very long pause, Juno said, “I don’t know how to apologize for that.  We haven’t talked about what it was that hurt you.” He didn’t say it in a way that blamed Peter for not bringing it up.  He was quiet and honest. He truly didn’t know.

The only adequate response had to be honesty in return.  Peter took a deep breath and said, “You’d been suffering and I had no idea.  If I told you now that I broke my left arm in our interim time, and that it set badly and still aches sometimes, could you be certain you hadn’t hurt me out of carelessness?”

There was a flash of fear in Juno’s eyes as he looked down at Peter’s arm.  “You didn’t, though, right?” he confirmed. Peter wanted to tackle him onto the bed and reassure him with his tongue in his mouth.

“So imagine how I felt, learning you’d been ill and I’d been… inconsiderate at best.”  This was an important conversation to have, no matter how sexy Juno was.

“If I say something now, I’m gonna sound like an asshole,” Juno told him.  “Is it okay if I think about it for a couple days? Maybe even a week.”

“Take all the time you need,” Peter said, and reached out to hold Juno’s hand.  That pulled a smile out of him. “If you don’t mind my asking, though, what’s the occasion?  You usually avoid difficult conversations like the plague.”

Juno swallowed -- all his nervous tics were just too cute -- and said, “It’s a repentance holiday.  I haven’t done it since… Since the HCPD kicked me out, and I had apologies to make that I knew no one would accept.  It’s called ROH-sha-sha-NA.”

“You’re making them up now,” Peter accused him lightly.  “The next Hebrew word you tell me is going to have  _ four _ consecutive syllables that sound the same.”

Juno snorted.

“You’re having me on,” Peter insisted as Juno grinned at him and tried not to giggle.  “Meh-zu-zuh, Ro-sha-sha-na, where does it end? I’ll be tripping over my very agile tongue trying to remember the seven nearly-identical syllables of a sacred Jewish fountain pen, and some good Samaritan will tell me they just call them pens, these days.”

“Rosh. HashaNAH,” Juno said, grinning, and pulled a bag of apple rings out of his coat pocket.  “The new year. It ends in one you’ll like, called Yom Kippur. Are those syllables different enough for you?” He gestured toward Peter with the apple rings and Peter took a few.

“Is the dried fruit some kind of code or custom?” Peter asked, and bit into one.

Juno blushed.  Peter loved his blush.  “It’s apples, actually. You eat apples with honey for a sweet New Year.  But I’ll take what I can get, out here.”

In the interest of keeping that adorable, flustered look on Juno’s face, Peter smiled placidly and asked, “Why?”  Something about remembering all the nitpicky bits, or maybe just sharing the very literal reasoning for Jewish customs, flustered Juno like nothing else.

“Why what?” Juno asked, and bit off a piece of apple.

“Why apples and honey?  Why not any fruit and honey?  Why not candy? I could think of a hundred sweet things, and none of them would be raw apples with honey.”

The incredulity on Juno’s face was priceless.  Peter’s lady-love was, in the best possible way, completely incapable of concealing his emotions for any significant period of time.  “I tell you we eat sweet things for a sweet year, and  _ that’s _ your question?” Juno asked, and Peter didn’t bother hiding the grin that came from watching Juno get so passionate.  “No questions about the phrasing, like how a year can be sweet, or why sweetness would be the goal in the first place, just ‘why use apples as the sweet thing?’  You really can’t think of a better question?”

“I think whatever makes you so passionate is the best question,” Peter told him, still grinning like an idiot.

In retrospect, he should have expected Juno to whack him in the chest with the bag of apples.  In the moment, it startled him so badly that he knocked the bag out of Juno’s hand, dropped it himself, and nearly let it fall on the floor.

“Careful,” he chided as he fumbled, and finally caught, the dried fruit.  “Apples are hard to find. Who  _ does _ pick a heritage crop as a symbol of their holiday, anyway?  It certainly seems inconvenient.”

Juno snatched the apples away from him and stuffed them back in his pocket.  “Uh, pretty sure we’re part of the reason apples are protected as a heritage crop in the first place,” he said.  “You… did know Judaism started thousands of years before the Industrial Mass Extinction Event, right?”

Interesting to know.  “Well, I certainly do now.”

“When  _ was _ that, anyway?  After electric lights, definitely.  You can tell Judaism’s pre-electric because every damn holiday needs candles.  Was industrial extinction twentieth century?”

“Twenty-first, I think, but the twentieth set the stage for it,” Peter reminded him.  “I do need to concede a point I made earlier; if these customs came down to you through millennia, from before all our modern comforts, then apples and honey sound exactly like what I would expect ancient peasants to eat for a fun dessert.”

Juno smiled and settled in next to him, and Peter could feel him shake even though he wasn’t laughing audibly.  He leaned against Peter’s side. “I’m taking Yom Kippur off work,” he said quietly. “I’ll be on Titan, but you won’t be able to reach me.”

“I think you’ll like it,” Peter told him, smiling back at him.  “It’s got a gorgeous view of Saturn and a thriving arts community.  The last time I was there, I was a young actor named Noah Simes.” That had been a very fun recon assignment.  Stage acting was both easier and harder than acting for a con, and while the other actors were nearly as dramatic as he was, they certainly brought a very fun energy to the cast party.  It had almost seemed a shame to leave, but of course honest work never paid as well as thieving, so once he had enough information on the show’s producer (collected at the cast party), he’d left for Saturn.

“I’m not gonna be looking around too much,” Juno told him.  “I’m gonna be in a synagogue all day, fasting.”

“Fasting!”  Peter didn’t get enough of a handle on his shock to delay or tone down his reaction.  “Juno, you’ve been ill." He looked down at Juno and put a hand on his cheek to pull Juno's face toward him.  Juno wasn't in any sort of great danger, but his cheeks looked just a little sunken. His skin was drier than before. He was in no condition to fast.  They were going to Saturn in the first place to make their sale and buy the services of a good chemist, who could turn the Curemother into useable medicine.

Juno rolled his eye. "It's one day, Nureyev," he protested, as if it was an argument they'd had fifty times before and it was getting boring.  "And I'm taking a protein bar and some water with me, just in case. It isn't a mitzvah to overdo it and pass out."

Peter didn't like mother-henning, and he wasn't really any good at it, but Juno had a unique knack for getting himself in over his head, and Peter just couldn't help fretting uselessly over him sometimes. "You'll call if anything does happen, though, right?" he asked, trying to mask his anxiety over Juno fasting when he'd been losing weight for weeks.  "Preferably Vespa, but anyone would be fine--”

“Nureyev.” Juno leaned against him, his head against Peter’s chest.  Peter drew his arm closer around the detective. “Nothing’s gonna happen.  Trust me. It’s a one-day fast.”

Peter was between a rock and a hard place.  On the one hand, Juno was the sort of person who left hospitals AMA after emergency surgery, who gave maybe three seconds of warning before his legs crumpled beneath him from anemic shock.  On the other hand, Peter was always going on about trust, and it probably wasn’t anything Juno hadn’t done before. And he was taking some food…

“Just take your comms with you, okay?” Peter asked.  “Then I won’t bother you about it anymore.”

Juno nodded.  “Yeah, I can do that.  On Silent, though, okay?  Can’t have you calling in the middle of the day, interrupting prayer.”

"You pray?" Peter teased.

"I have led you in prayer," Juno reminded him, sounding annoyed (but only barely).

The important part of the conversation was over. Juno had agreed to take food and water and his comms, so now Peter could tease him to his heart's content. He turned Juno a little more toward himself and said, "You didn't even teach us the songs that come after; it was anything  _ but _ a complete cultural experience."

"Oh, and you're saying Jet got across all the emotional nuance of his Jovian colonization holiday?"

"I wouldn't be able to tell you," Peter told him. He tried to not bring up his issues with Jet in the interest of being a team player, but if he was completely honest with himself, it was also, at least a bit, because he was the only one on the crew from the Outer Rim. "I don't listen to anything Jet has to say. I went through the motions, but honestly, I don't remember it."

Juno frowned and raised a hand to stroke the side of Peter's face.  "What is it that bugs you so much?" he asked. "If he's been a jerk to you, I want to know."

"It isn't personal," Peter said, taking Juno's hand and kissing his fingertips, then holding it against his chest.  "Does he strike you as… Particularly Solarian?"

Juno nodded.  "Yeah, in a big way.  He said some… really weird things in the Cerberus Province."

Peter smiled tightly.  "Well, I have trouble when I try not to take that sort of thing personally."  That was the end of the story. It was all Peter was going to say on the topic.

Except then Juno opened his big, sweet mouth and said, "I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks he's an asshole."

Peter loved his partner. Best partner in the solar system.

"So, wait," Juno continued, "If you hate him so much, what is it you always call him? I assumed it was a nickname?"

Peter grinned. Very threatening, his grin. Very toothy.  "Have you heard of the cultural theory of curse words?" he asked, very pleased to have someone to tell about this.

"Never heard of it in my life," Juno assured him.

"It's the theory that different cultures have entirely different concepts of swear words. For example, in multiple Solar languages, you might damn something, which is cursing it to some sort of fiery afterlife, usually interpreted as falling into the sun. On Outer Rim planets, we have curses that get translated as 'damn,' but in fact refer to a frozen, vacuous wasteland, as if you had fallen  _ away _ from the sun." He grinned again. "The relevance of this is that Brahmis and Solar have the exact same concept for the word 'motherfucker,' and Jet 'Refugees Deserve What They Get' Sikuliaq has no intent of learning any Outer Rim languages."

Juno snorted, and Peter held him as he laughed himself out, occasionally praising him for such a good joke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was worried this every-three-days posting schedule was going to be too fast for me to conclude the second part of this story, but it looks like I'm finishing it up! I should have time to edit it some, too. :)


	5. Happy New Year, Mistah Steel! (pt. 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juno goes to Yom Kippur services while the rest of the Crime Crew cases the mark's house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Neilah is the last service on Yom Kippur. Because the Torah is out the whole time, you stand to show respect. Some people can't, either because of ongoing medical issues or because they've just fasted for 24 hours (though starving yourself to the point where it's harmful is absolutely not the point). At the end, a horn made of ram's horn, called a shofar, is blown.
> 
> MissJuliaMiriam, who posted the first Jewish Juno stories, commented on my last chapter and really helped clarify for me which themes are important in this story, so even though it's a day late, that's why I was able to write this conclusion so fast.

Juno was consoled by the fact that he wasn't the only person who passed out during the Neilah.

He was happy to write it off as a blood pressure issue; for most of Yom Kippur, you sat down, so when you stood for the opening of the ark, your heart wasn't expecting to have to pump harder just to get blood to your head. Given that he wasn't the only person who stood up and then fainted almost immediately, it seemed like a plausible theory. He was very carefully escorted to a different room, and made to sit down and drink some orange juice, and he made friends with the young woman who had also fainted upon standing.

Her name was Rebecca, and she'd never fainted before, even on Yom Kippur. She complained of a headache, but it went away as she got her blood sugar up and got hydrated, so she probably hadn't hit her head.  She was twenty-three and a lighting technician at a local theatre, and she repeated that she'd never passed out before as she started crying.

"Hey, hey," Juno said gently, not sure what to do when some kid you didn't know passed out and then started sobbing in front of you. "You're fine. You said your head's better, right? That means it's not a concussion. You're totally fine."

The kid kept crying, and said "I'm so sorry," which was especially weird because she definitely hadn't done anything wrong, and sipped some more orange juice.

"I don't think you realize you're talking to the queen of mysterious injuries," Juno told her, and that at least distracted her enough that she sniffled and looked up.  Juno nodded, trying to hold her attention. "Maybe you haven't passed out before, but I almost passed out on my boyfriend before he was even my boyfriend. Not from just not eating, either; I was  going into shock from bleeding out. He asked how I was, and I said I was fine and fell over onto him. He had to sit me down against a wall so he could go find a first aid kit."

Rebecca was staring at him now instead of crying. "And he's dating you now?" she asked cautiously.

Juno nodded. "Told me not to fast today, too, since I've had some stomach trouble recently. He always was a step ahead of me. Gonna fret over me nonstop when I get back home." He wasn't looking forward to it, but he'd kind of earned it by not taking care of himself like he'd promised.  He guessed he could lie, but he didn't want to.

"I'm just scared my parents will worry," Rebecca told him, still sounding a little tearful. "I've never done Yom Kippur away from home before, but I couldn't get all the way to Mars and back; they're out of alignment, so it would take forever, and it's hard enough taking today off when we started dress rehearsal yesterday, and-- and--"

She was working herself up again. Juno used to be pretty good at that, the first couple years after Ben died. Maybe it was just part of being in your early twenties. He kept smiling and said, "Hey, nothing bad happened, though, right? You didn't hit your head, everyone was really nice, you had some juice and felt better… This is just a funny story to tell your friends in a couple months."

Rebecca nodded and drank some more juice.  "I'm calling them tonight, though," she told him. "My parents, I mean.  What do I say?"

"Say you went to Yom Kippur services and prayed all day, and two people passed out during the Neilah," Juno advised.  He'd always been good at lying to his mom. Rebecca probably had good enough parents she'd never needed to learn. "That's a great story, right? I don't think I've ever seen one person pass out, and here we've managed to come to a service where  _ two _ people fainted."

He didn't mention he hadn't been to a Yom Kippur service in over a decade and a half. For all he knew, it was commonplace these days, or maybe only common in certain amounts of gravity. 

Rebecca was staring at him like she'd never thought of lying about it. "Are you gonna lie to your boyfriend?" she asked quietly.

That was a more personal question than she realized.  "That's kind of a different situation," he said. He couldn't remember having to back out of a lie he hadn't even told yet.  "For me, it's this long-term thing where I was bullshitting him about some nausea for a few--" he wanted to say days, but could he really lie to some kid who didn't even know how to lie to her parents? His gut said no. "--weeks, and I promised to take better care of myself as part of my teshuva, so that would pretty much make me the galaxy's biggest asshole. As a one-off thing, though? Just keep an eye on it for a day or two and you'll be fine." The Juno Steel method of recovering from anemia was to have lots of protein-rich and iron-rich food, and Rebecca hadn't even lost any blood, just gotten a little too hungry, so she'd be fine.

Rebecca was nodding, but also looking down at her lap, clearly embarrassed.

Juno leaned forward and murmured, "My brother used to cry at the end of Yom Kippur, too. He was a dancer, so he was already starving by morning."

"Did it get better as he got older?" the kid asked, which was a completely predictable question that Juno should have anticipated.

He was trying to stay positive, though, so he said, "I can tell you for certain he hasn't cried on Yom Kippur for over twenty years" which was definitely a true statement.

It was hard to look at a kid who was light-years away from her parents and crying from hunger without doing anything, so Juno got up and went to one of the break-fast buffet tables and loaded up a plate with some snacks and pickles. He set it down in front of Rebecca and sat down across from her, snagging a piece of pickled carrot in the process.

"Sun's already down in Israel," he pointed out. It was even twilight outside, coincidentally enough. "The last hour's just to be sure. You'll feel better with some salt in your system." He bit into his carrot piece loudly so it would be clear she wouldn't be breaking the fast alone.  Medicinal orange juice was one thing, Juno figured, and eating solid food was probably another. It occurred to him, as he tried to coax a kid he'd just met into eating for her health, that Nureyev would probably be doing the same thing for him, if he were at services with Juno instead of running recon on an antique doll collector.  He felt a little better about munching on pickles before the holiday was technically over.

"I should get back to the service," Rebecca told him.  She stood up, then stood still for a moment.

"I should probably tell you I'm practically a pro at leaving hospitals before I'm cleared to go," Juno told her, smirking.  "You're not ready to go back yet, kid. If you want to be ready to see the last few minutes, have some salty food and some more water."

Rebecca cried as she ate some pickles, and then apologized for crying so much as if Juno hadn't already told her he got it.

"Nah, you're fine," he said. "Like I said, my brother used to.  I get it."

He watched over her as they waited out their lightheadedness, even though Juno had felt mostly better after having some juice.  He walked her back into the sanctuary about three minutes before the shofar was blown, keeping an eye out in case she was less steady than she wanted to admit (which Juno had plenty of first-hand experience lying about). They sat together in the back and he lost sight of her when the holiday was declared to be over and everyone went to the auditorium with the break-fast food.  He saw her briefly, standing with some other kids who were probably her friends next to a tray of fruit and looking considerably more animated than she had before, but he had a bus to catch, so he left pretty quickly after he'd had a meal-sized amount of food.

He returned to the ship after dinner, so he stopped in his room to change into pajamas and went upstairs to find everyone watching a movie together.

Nureyev raised his arm in invitation, so Juno went and sat next to him.  He couldn't stop thinking about Nureyev's  _ face _ when he found out Juno was going to fast.  The shock and betrayal. The genuine worry. And he'd been right.

So, when Rita declared an intermission to make more popcorn, Juno turned to the other pair of lovers on the couch and asked, "Hey, uh, Vespa? I've got a medicine question for you."

He felt Nureyev's arm stiffen.  Vespa just said, "Yeah, Steel?"

Juno took a deep breath.  "When someone faints, is it the fainting that's dangerous, or just the fall risk?"

Nureyev said "Juno" very softly.

"Well, there's the fall, and then there's whatever made you faint in the first place," Vespa said.  "Why? You writing a book?"

Before Juno could answer, Nureyev all but yelled, "You didn't  _ tell her _ you were fasting?"

"Oh, you meant if you, personally, fainted," Vespa said with an eyebrow raise.  "Then you're also in danger of getting yelled at by your ship's medic. What the hell, Steel?"

"Yom Kippur is a fasting holiday," Juno said defensively.  "I passed out when I stood up, and then some very nice volunteers watched me drink juice and eat pickles."

"Did you hit your head?" Vespa asked, sounding a lot more neutral than Nureyev felt next to Juno.

Juno was already shaking his head. "Nah, just kinda fell over onto the person next to me.  So: dangerous? Or just… inadvisable?"

"Hmmm." Vespa made a big deal out of thinking the question over, which was definitely a bad sign.  "Fasting, including not drinking water, when you've had radiation nausea for over a month, to the point where you fall over in the middle of a religious service. This one's a toughie, Steel.  Gonna have to put a lot of thought into it. I definitely can't figure out whether you went in knowing it was dangerous from the fact that you  _ hid it from me." _

"I took one of Jet's shitty protein bars," Juno objected.  "And I meant to drink some water if I felt bad; I just… didn't realize how bad I felt."

"I object to this line of conversation," Jet interrupted.  "My protein bars are acceptably palatable."

"A little beside the point, Sikuliaq," Vespa pointed out, only glancing away from Juno for the tiniest fraction of a second.  Her eyes bored into him, focused and angry. "You're probably fine, but that's luck, okay, Steel? Not luck like your old sharpshooting; luck like 'you fell sideways instead of forwards or backwards and it probably saved you from a concussion.' I'd say, if the thing you're doing gets hidden from me and gives Connick that sick sort of look he's got right now, just don't do it.  Swallow your pride, eat the protein bar, and hope you're in better condition next year."

"Juno, you know what I do to people who threaten my crewmembers' safety, right?" Buddy asked.

"Uh.  Kill them, usually, I thought," Juno replied, but if she killed him, she would be a threat to her crew, too.

"Neutralize the threat," Buddy corrected him.  "So, while Vespa hasn't threatened to lock you in the infirmary overnight, I'm certainly not above it.  Do you understand?"

Juno shrank against Nureyev's side a little and said, "Yeah.  Yeah, I get it."

"Good.  Now, I don't believe anybody's asked: how was your religious service?"

"Uh.  Good. It was good," Juno told her.  "It was very… standard fare for Yom Kippur services.  And the food at the end was fine."

"You don't sound terribly enthusiastic," Buddy pointed out, smiling slightly.  Juno got the feeling she would have laughed at him when she was younger.

Juno just shrugged.  "It got the job done," he told her.  "It wasn't the best in the solar system, but it was a service.  I wore a prayer shawl and an ugly hat. I did all the parts of the holiday.  Had some real eggs and a nice bagel at the end."

"And  _ fainted," _ Nureyev grumbled, and pulled his arm tighter around Juno's shoulders.

"Only the one time," Juno pointed out.  "And, to the congregation's credit, I was immediately taken into the break-fast room to eat something, along with this poor kid who was also celebrating off Mars for the first time, so maybe there's just something about Titan's gravity that makes it easier to pass out."

"Juno, I have  _ been _ to high-gravity planets, and they do take a toll on you, and that isn't what happened on Titan," Nureyev told him.  "Why won't you take this seriously?"

That was a pretty screwed-up thing to ask, and Juno wasn't about to put up with Nureyev suggesting he couldn't take care of himself.  "What do you think I'm doing, asking Vespa for advice?" he asked, and he sounded like he was two minutes away from yelling. He sounded like an asshole, and he didn't care.  "If this was any other day -- if I hadn't  _ promised you _ I'd keep you updated -- do you really think I'd have mentioned it at all?"

He could easily have gone on, but Rita's voice drifted in from the kitchen, saying, "Mista Steeeel, you better not be yelling at your boyfriend when I get back there!"

So instead, he pulled his knees up onto the couch, leaned harder into Nureyev's side, and said nothing.  All in the interest of having more popcorn, of course.

He sulked his way through one and a half movies, but Nureyev's arm was around him and he occasionally kissed Juno on the head, which definitely wasn't the worst, but Juno felt there was a time bomb between them about to explode, and the last time a lover had given this much of a shit about his well-being, she was a controlling asshole who couldn't deal with the fact that Juno had a dangerous job.  Nureyev seemed fine with Juno's job and its risks, so what was his beef?

They went downstairs together and Juno wanted to send Nureyev to his own room.  He couldn't let whatever-it-was fester, though, so when they got to his door, he said, "Why don't you come in, Connick?  We can talk.". He felt like he was too tired  _ not _ to have whatever argument was coming.

Nureyev agreed quietly and followed him into his room.  Shut the door. Hugged Juno tight from behind and kissed his head again.  Juno stiffened from the surprise, then relaxed and pulled Nureyev's arms closer around him.

Juno felt sick and it wasn't from the radiation all those weeks ago.  He wanted to stand like that when they weren't in the middle of an argument.

Nureyev ducked his head down to breathe in the scent of Juno's neck, then let out the breath slowly.  Juno regretted that he'd never found a perfume to wear, and probably just smelled like a version of himself that hadn't showered in two days.

"I worried about you, you know," he said quietly, his mouth still right next to Juno's ear. "I couldn't call, and of course we were casing the mark's house, but I couldn't help worrying that you were going to overdo it and hurt yourself."

"So what are you going to do about it?" Juno asked, equally quietly, as he let Nureyev kiss his neck.  "What does Peter Nureyev do with a lover who just won't keep himself safe?"

Nureyev paused.  His arms went stiff.  They felt like a vise instead of an embrace.  "Juno… Was this some sort of elaborate test? Because I really don't appreciate you using yourself as collateral to pull some sort of… Ultimatum or something out of me."

"What?  No." What did that even  _ mean? _   "I passed out by mistake.  I really thought I was fine.  But… What happens now?" And why was Nureyev avoiding the question?

"I would think that would be your decision," Nureyev said.  "Are you going to keep working on your promise to me, or are you going to decide it just isn't worth pursuing?"

This was one of those disconnects they had sometimes.  One of those times when the way Juno thought relationships worked and the way Nureyev thought relationships worked just didn't intersect.  But, before Juno could process that thought, he snapped, "No, of  _ course _ I'm still gonna try to take better care of myself,  Nureyev; I'm asking what  _ you're  _ gonna do."  Did Nureyev think his promises meant nothing?

No.  Nureyev… Probably hadn't had the same string of shitty lovers Juno had, each controlling in their own original way.  Whether it was brute force or manipulation, it had always been clear that getting hurt -- or  _ being _ hurt -- was a crime against his loved ones.  That was part of why he hadn't had too many, recently.  Not long-term, at least. And Nureyev didn't know that, and it was unfair to assume he could guess it.

Back in the real world, Nureyev was leaning a little on his shoulders, saying, "Well, then everything is  _ fine,  _ Juno.  Just, make sure you have a good breakfast tomorrow, okay?  We have a big day of crime ahead of us." He straightened up, but tightened his arms around Juno's shoulders and added, "I don't want you to have to handle this when I'm sure you're exhausted, but I feel like you're afraid of me sometimes, and I don't know why.  I could certainly be imagining things, but if it rings a bell, give it some thought and talk to me, okay?" He kissed Juno just behind his ear. "I'm always happy to talk."

"I'm not that tired," Juno said, but didn't turn around.  This would be easier if he couldn't look at Nureyev. "Look, I… I've had a lot of bad lovers.  Some people, they see the abused kid in you, and they want that. They want someone they can scare into loving them.  They know that game of pushing you away and reeling you in, and they've decided they're going to win it. I'm not scared of you, Nureyev.  But I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, because that's how it's been my whole life. Just… Remind me you're not that person, sometimes?"

"Of course."  Nureyev pulled Juno very close to himself and leaned over him to cuddle him.  "Juno. I have no ulterior motives. I just want to know that you aren't hurting yourself.  I… find it easier than I'd like to remember what you did in Miasma's tomb. And I get scared you'll fall back on self-sacrifice again for no reason."

Juno nodded and knew that Nureyev could feel it.  "I'm trying to be better," he said quietly. "No, I'm trying to  _ do _ better.  I've been working on trying to live instead of trying not to die."

Nureyev kissed his head again and murmured, "I'm proud of you.  That's a good turning point, even if you didn't reach it at your New Year."

"Yeah," Juno agreed quietly.  "Yeah. Hey, uh, Peter?"

He felt Nureyev twitch when he heard his first name used.  His voice was syrupy-smooth when he responded, "Yes, Darling?"

Juno smiled.  "Stay the night?". He pulled Nureyev's arms close against his chest.

Nureyev ducked down and nipped at his ear.  When Juno twitched, he drew back, then leaned over again to kiss it instead.  "Any time, Juno," he said, and Juno could hear his smile. Then he carefully, like Juno was the most precious thing in the universe -- but not, somehow, like he was also the most breakable -- turned Juno around to face him and kissed him long and slow.  He tasted like toasted corn and fruit wine. He smelled like rich spices and whatever it was that made his cologne so enticing. The glitter on his lips was just a little gritty for Juno's taste.

When they finally broke apart, Juno could tell Nureyev was having as much trouble pulling a coherent thought together as he was.  So he smiled and pulled him over to the bed, let himself fall back so his head was on the pillow, and finally thought of a nice taunt.  "Long day of crime tomorrow," he reminded Nureyev, and pulled his legs over to the middle of the bed after him, making a big show of stretching his arms out.

Nureyev didn't take long to follow.  He climbed on top of him, rushing to push his mouth against Juno's again, those sparkling lips, that overwhelmingly masculine and overwhelmingly personal scent of Peter Nureyev.

"Wouldn't want to tire me out too much," Juno panted when they pulled away from each other.  "I did faint earlier."

He felt Nureyev laugh silently where their stomachs were pressed against each other.  "I've seen the unspeakable things you can do to a burrito after passing out for much more perilous reasons," he pointed out.  "I'm sure you just demolished their buffet tables, and felt much better for it."

Juno kissed him again, briefly.  "I, uh. I was taking care of the kid that also fainted.  Kids in their early twenties don't know how to take care of themselves, do they?"

Nureyev kissed his cheek and teased, "It would seem detectives in their early forties don't, either."

"I walked straight into that," Juno admitted.  "But, anyway, we both had some juice, and I got us a pickle plate, and… It made me think of how you're always considerate of me.  So, thank you." He pushed Nureyev down a little so he could kiss his forehead. It made his stomach twist a little, saying that. He was trying not to hate how considerate Peter Nureyev was of every small issue he had.  He usually tried not to think about Nureyev designing meals around his very limited understanding of Juno's nausea, or the way he'd run his hands and lips over each of Juno's scars the first time he'd seen Juno naked on the ship, only saying how sorry he was that he "wasn't there with you, Juno, or I might have been able to help." He was trying not to feel sick every time Nureyev did something nice, because he knew the guy was actually trying to help, but God was it hard to actually believe that.

"You're very welcome, Juno," Nureyev told him, and leaned up to kiss Juno's forehead in return.  He returned to position his face in front of Juno's, and Juno could feel the breath on his face when he said, "And I'm glad you found a way to feel compelled to help yourself," and kissed him.

When he pulled away, Juno pulled him down and to the side, into a hug that placed their heads right next to each other.  Nureyev lay down on top of him, a solid weight pressing down on him. "I think… I think it's going to be a little easier to let you help me," Juno told him.  He could blame his breathlessness on the Peter-shaped weight over his lungs. "Knowing how it felt from the other side." Peter was kissing the crook of his neck, damn him.  He was too distracting. "When it just feels like the normal thing to do, not some bullshit where the other person's gonna owe you later."

"Oh, it's the most natural thing in the world, darling," Nureyev told him, and sucked on Juno's clavicle in a way that made him make a truly undignified noise.  "Speaking of, I got you a little something on Saturn. I was going to wait for you to find it, but I always was impatient. If you'd open your nightstand?"

He flipped them both over so Juno was on top of him, and  _ licked _ one of Juno's knife scars.

"You snuck into my room and planted something in the sex drawer?" Juno asked.  Regardless of the wonderful things Nureyev was capable of, he didn't like presents and he didn't like people in his room when he wasn't there.

"You told me yourself you don't have an alarm system," Nureyev said as if that justified it.  "Not to say I couldn't have bypassed one, but anyone can just walk in here whenever they like, so I did."

"...And the lock?"

"Oh, you're so cute when you forget I've been a thief my whole life."

Juno dropped his head down next to Nureyev's.  "Look, I'm not saying no, but no more presents after this, okay?"

"I've only gotten you the one before, Juno," Nureyev lied, "And I fail to see why flowers on your birthday should be so distressing."

"And the suit," Juno corrected him.  "The one at the Oasis?" As far as he could tell, the suit was an apology for stealing the mask; the flowers were for the misplaced responsibility. Nureyev felt when Juno ran off on him, and now he was getting Juno something after their fight about the radiation sickness? He couldn't go through that again.  He couldn't have someone else apologize in gifts and make him feel like he owed something in return.

"You thought the suit was a gift?" Nureyev asked, sounding… weirdly surprised.  "Juno, you were traipsing around a six-star casino in your trenchcoat and ratty trousers, looking like a detective out of a movie.  I would no more let you walk around the resort looking like that than I'd let you walk around naked. Did you really think I got you a gift and then just left it behind for convenience?"

"We were being chased by assassins," Juno reminded him.

"Still! I would have at least given you the option.  But a disguise is easy to leave behind. If the alias is burnt, so is the costume, mother used to say."

Juno pushed himself up off the bed with his hands and leaned over to open the top drawer of his nightstand.  Placed carefully atop a box of condoms was a bright red box with a gold ribbon. He pulled it out and set it down on top of his tablet.

"I just… I don't want this to be our thing," Juno said. "I don't want to have a fight, and you get me something, and we pretend that makes it better."

"I promise you, Juno, this is a celebration gift, not a guilt one.  We discussed the radiation sickness, and we both apologized for our actions, and it was completely resolved three days ago.  But I knew we wouldn't have any time for sightseeing later, so just imagine I got you these after our trip to Buddy's chemist."

Juno sat up completely, still on top of Nureyev, and slid the ribbon off the box.  He prepared for a gift that would make him blush, but inside there was just… "...Cakes?"

"As I said, I thought they'd be to your liking.  If they're a bit heavy at the moment, I'm sure they can keep a couple days."

Juno brought the box up to his face to smell it.  "You got me bourbon balls," he said. The rich smell of chocolate and coconut and good alcohol surrounded them.  He closed the box.

"Tell me, Juno, if Peter Nureyev -- or Andrew Connick, for that matter, since he's more a name than a real alias -- if he were to feel so much guilt he felt the need to buy your affections back, what would have been in that box?"

"Diamonds," Juno said immediately.  "Or… Artifacts. Some famous empress' teacup or a comb from a thousand years ago. Hundred-year whiskey." Nureyev was right: it wouldn't be anything as mundane as a couple boozy cake balls.  There certainly wasn't any flair to them; they were pretty ugly, so they probably tasted great if Nureyev bought them anyway.

"Something as precious as you are," Nureyev told him, nodding like it was a simple agreement.  "So, please, accept this as something special I wanted to get just to make you happy, and I'll be careful about any gift-giving in the future."

Juno looked back and forth between Nureyev and the box for several moments, considering.  Then he said, "You know, there are two in here."

"Yes, well, I did want to make sure I got plenty.  And it was the smallest box they had, so I--"

"And there are two of us," Juno interrupted.  Nureyev could really be dense sometimes.

Nureyev's smile softened.  "Shall we take them up to the observation deck?" he asked quietly.

Juno found himself smiling without even thinking about it.  "Yeah. Yeah, let's do that,  _ Andrew." _

He got off Nureyev and they neatened themselves up, and on the way out of Juno's room, Nureyev kissed him and said, "Happy new year, darling."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [zichronot](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20584286) by [MissjuliaMiriam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissjuliaMiriam/pseuds/MissjuliaMiriam)




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